


As in A

by rude_not_ginger



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-15
Updated: 2014-10-15
Packaged: 2018-02-21 05:59:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2457425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rude_not_ginger/pseuds/rude_not_ginger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock Holmes meets Irene Adler.</p>
<p>What happens next?</p>
<p>A series of ways this story could go.  There is only one happy ending.  The others are missing vital pieces.</p>
            </blockquote>





	As in A

**Author's Note:**

> This work and its format are inspired and based on the story "Happy Endings" by Margaret Atwood.

Sherlock Holmes meets Irene Adler.

What happens next?

If you want the happy ending, select A.

 

**A.** Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler meet a grand total of four times in the flesh. In the first meeting, she outsmarts him, in the second, they stand on equal footing, in the third, he outsmarts her, and in their fourth, final meeting, he saves her life in Karachi. They say their brief goodbyes on the tarmac and she doesn't turn back to look at him as she leaves him forever. He thinks about her often. Occasionally, she thinks about him. They live good lives, as far as they go. He remains a detective, she remains herself. But they will always have those four moments, those four separate moments in time that they _did_ meet, and did know each other. There is respect, and some nostalgia. And for them, for all their lives, that is enough. This is the end of the story.

**B.** Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler meet a grand total of eighty-two times in the flesh. In the first meeting, she outsmarts him, in the second, they stand on equal footing, in the third, he outsmarts her, and in their fourth, final meeting, he saves her life in Karachi. They say their brief goodbyes on the tarmac and when she glances back at him, they both are very aware that it will not be the last time they meet. 

It is less than a year later that they encounter each other in Montenegro, and an affair begins. The affair continues for the better part of a year, and then they separate. And they remeet. She becomes a drug, something he wants buried in his veins every few years, then every few months. She has love affairs and he has drug addictions and yet they meet again. Her nails are long and red and reach out for him. They reconnect again and again. They do not marry, or speak of sentiment. She fills him and he fills her and yet they find themselves absolutely empty when they part. Everything continues as in A, except now everything is somehow not enough.

**C.** Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler meet a grand total of three times in the flesh. In the first meeting, she outsmarts him, in the second, they stand on equal footing, in the third, he outsmarts her. She dies somewhere in Karachi. Everything continues as in A, without Irene Adler.

**D.** Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler meet a grand total of fifteen times in the flesh. Everything begins as in B, but during that year in Montenegro, he speaks once of sentiment. No, not merely sentiment, but Sentiment, capitalized and made important. He speaks of it in circles and twisted through various instruments so that, to the average person, he wasn't speaking Sentiment at all. He almost thinks he's gotten away with it. Almost, of course.

She sees through this, because she always sees through these things, and leaves the hotel room without another word. Her place on the bed is cold, and she doesn't shake when she reapplies her lipstick in the elevator. He lights a cigarette and insists he feels no pain. He continues with his plans without her, and she never appears again. He feels something that is almost but not quite rejection. She insists she feels nothing, and that was what this was always about.

She meets a lawyer named Gabrielle Norton, and begins a torrid affair with her, complete with all the levels of Sentiment that Gabrielle is accustomed to. An unusual feat for Irene Adler, but she's changed as she's aged. He reads about it in a paper one day and refuses to feel envy. He gets high in Baker Street and reminds himself that Sentiment is something for the losing side. Everything continues as in A, except without the nostalgia.

**E.** Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler meet once in the flesh. Everything that happened in A instead happened mostly between Sherlock Holmes and Jim Moriarty, without Karachi, mind. In this time, in _this_ way, Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler never met. Never crossed minds over a cameraphone and its contents.

And he lives. And she lives. And they age. And she holds her information in her phone and extorts money and power and protection. And she reads about his death and subsequent resurrection and travels to Montenegro alone in the summer.

And when she is 57, she travels to London to do some business with an old friend, and she passes through Baker Street. An old, thin man bumps into her. His eyes are piercing, and he stares at her like he's trying to pin her through the street. She stares back. Many men have tried to hold her down with their eyes, she can hold them just as well.

She recognizes his face. The great Sherlock Holmes, that clever detective with the funny hat. How different he looks now. How the mighty have disappeared into obscurity. He takes a step back, and stands only mere feet from her.

A foot at most, if she's honest. Not far at all. She rarely lets anyone this close.

"I can't read you," he says. His voice is deep, deeper than she would have imagined from his photographs. It cracks with age and, from the smell of his breath, constant smoking. Why he says this to her is a mystery, too. Perhaps with his age, he has simply forgotten not to say what he is thinking.

"Few can," she replies, tartly.

The edge of his lips turn up. Just the edge, just a little. Were she a younger woman, were she interested in a game, this would be the sign of an _in_. The way into a man's heart, into his soul. The way to manipulate and control. But now she controls many other webs, she doesn't need him. She would never have needed a detective, anyway.

"Sherlock Holmes," he says. He offers her his hand. Long, thin, cracked. No sign of a wedding band, but she wouldn't have expected one.

"I know," she replies, not taking it. She turns that foot of space into two feet, and then turns to walk away. She doesn't turn back to look at him as she leaves him forever. He thinks about her often. Occasionally, she thinks about him.

Everything continues as in A.


End file.
